


the springtime of youth

by descartes



Series: a musical comedy without the music [2]
Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: Jeeves and Wooster AU, M/M, unfinished work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-05
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-22 00:33:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1569464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/descartes/pseuds/descartes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>wherein there is a rift in the household, aided and abetted by the greeks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the springtime of youth

The telegram arrived while David was propped up on his pillows, elbows-deep into his second slice of toast.

"Oh! It's from Benton," David said, glancing over it.

"Sir?"

David looked up, detecting the faint lilt of inquiry in Cook's tone. "That's right, Cook; you don't know Mr Paul. I think you were on holiday then, so I had all my meals at the club. Benton – Mr Paul – had been in the metrop for a few days, him spending most of his days down in Angelby, and we fell into a neat friendship with each other. He and I went to all the popular musicals in town— Benton's a composer, really, and wrote this capital tune he played for me once. We're sort of like those Greek fellows, whatsis and the other one."

"Sir?"

"Damon and Pythias! That's who we're like. Two mated souls meeting and all that." He read the contents of the telegram, a frown creeping over his face, then handed it over for Cook's perusal. "What do you make of it, Cook?"

"The message seems to indicate, sir," Cook said after running a critical eye through the brief missive, "that the young gentleman is desirous of obtaining your assistance with a matter of great urgency."

David nodded his agreement, incidentally scattering crumbs that Cook stolidly whisked from the bedsheets with the edge of a linen napkin. "I thought so too. But there's not a word on the whys of the m. of g. u., what?"

"Yes, sir. Mr Paul has left his reasons for requiring your presence undisclosed."

David brooded on the issue over a fruit platter. He always made it a policy not to involve himself in schemes of his friends that required Cook to extricate him from them; however—

"Never let it be said that David Archuleta refuses the pleading hand of a pal," he finally pronounced. "Benton is a good egg, the Damon to my Pythias, etc. Cook, pack a few ties suitable for the chilly climes of Angelby. We shall be driving there to-day."

"I believe it is warm in Angelby at this time of year, sir."

David motioned carelessly. "Yellow ties, then."

"Very good, sir."

There was a certain tenor to this last riposte that piqued David, and he stared intently at Cook as he unearthed the suitcases from storage. Yes, there it was: his valet always maintained the expression of a (very hirsute) stuffed frog, but David's keen eye could discern that the e. in situ was a little more stuffed that usual.

"Cook," he ventured to ask. "Is something the matter?"

Cook paused in his brisk folding of shirts in order to impart a courteous, "I think not, sir."

David's brow wrinkled. He wasn't inclined to press, but if something was wrong, it would be remiss of a conscientious employer— "Are you sure?"

"I am perfectly well, sir. Shall I take the tray and prepare your bath now?"

"Oh. Quite. Very well, Cook." David took a final fortifying sip of orange juice, then pointed out, almost apologetically, "Only you seem to be clutching the telegram as though it was a particularly foul hat. Er, any objections to today's agenda?"

Cook's features didn't so much as twitch as he collected the remains of what had been, until two minutes ago, a satisfactory breakfast. "No, sir."

He swept out of the bedroom in a manner David would've called "flouncing" if it hadn't been done by a full-grown man in an impeccable suit, leaving David still in his bed, mouth agape and a fluttering worry somewhere in his belly.

*

However, while David was cramming himself into his tweeds, the telephone tootled and he was issued instructions to go to his Uncle Simon's house for a tête-à-tête. Said uncle being the one who slept in a fire pit and took his tea with a splash of arsenic, David had no choice but to stiffen the old spine and oblige.

"Good afternoon, Master Archie," said Seacrest upon opening the door to Uncle Simon's lair. "Fine weather today, isn't it, sir? Mr Cowell will be down shortly – to the drawing room please – would you care for refreshments while you wait? A sandwich?"

"I'm fine, thanks," David murmured faintly under this veritable onslaught of cheerful obsequience. Seacrest had been in Uncle Simon's employ for as long as David could remember, which permitted the man liberty with a lint-brush around David's shoulders. David could not forbear the sartorial onslaught; he was obscurely glad Cook was running errands at this very moment. His valet might not have taken kindly to the usurpation of his rightful duties to the Archuleta corpus.

Finally free of Seacrest's well-meaning if heavy-handed ministrations, David bunged himself down on the drawing-room sofa and wondered why he had been summoned by his Uncle Simon, who generally regarded the well-being of his nephew very much like a cow would regard a pebble in the next county. No blazing filial affection here, but no blazing about the "foul young blot upon the good family name" that so many other young men in his acquaintance were subjected to either. 

David's ruminations were interrupted by the entrance of the uncle under consideration, followed by a Seacrest fussing violently with a grey coat, which to David's untrained eye looked like the one Uncle Simon had been wearing for years, though perhaps not continuously. Perhaps a maid aired it out once or twice during the spring. 

Uncle Simon dismissed Seacrest crisply, ignoring the latter's malevolent glare directed towards the coat now about his person, and turned abruptly to David.

"Hullo, uncle," said David, chancing a chummy wiggle of his fingers.

"You've grown," Uncle Simon replied, and sat down on the armchair opposite. He eyed David with a look that could've curdled milk at ten paces; David tried not to squirm as though he was still in shorts and had cheeks blotchy with illicit jam. Seacrest shimmered in with a tray of morning victuals and shimmered out again.

Over a steaming coffee cup, Uncle Simon said, "What's all this nonsense your Aunt Paula's been sending me in telegrams about her dearest darling nephew growing old and lonely without hearing the pitter-patter of little Archuleta feet across the floorboards?"

"Sorry?"

"Don't answer a question with a question, David. Haven't you been engaged to a Ms Sparks?"

David reddened. "She's broken it off, uncle."

"There was that Ms Cecil."

"We parted ways."

"And Ms Castro."

"Oh, ah," David eloquently prevaricated.

Uncle Simon's face registered a brief look of impressed surprise, then quickly rearranged itself into blank annoyance. Attention nominally on his nephew and wholly at the financial pages at his elbow, he said, "A young man such as yourself shouldn't be dilly-dallying about town, doing whatever it is you do with too much money and not enough brains. Find some girl (preferably sensible about money and hats) who'll cook you your favorite meals or whatever it is wives do."

David privately felt that such cooking of f. m. by a wife was out of the question, being as he felt that he was one of— how had Cook put it? oh yes— one of Nature's bachelors. Marriage was well and good for some other cove, but David had come 'round to the realization that his foreign policy was to issue a nolle prosequi (another one of Cook's wheezes) on the subject of matrimony. The advice also seemed rather thick, coming from a man who'd remained unattached all his life and seemingly had no intention to do anything about it, but one cannot criticize one's uncles in their own drawing rooms.

D. being the better part of v., in this case his uncle's good graces, David ventured a quick, "I shall try, Uncle Simon."

"Alright, then. Oh, and do tell Paula to stop bothering me with this telegramming nonsense. She keeps prattling on as though she wasn't charged by the word. Honestly, how anybody can be expected to take such a minute interest in the lives of one's relations, I do not know," Uncle Simon grumbled, still looking not very plussed, though it may have been because day's shipping news had already caught his eye.

"I can't," said David apologetically. "I'm off to Angelby this afternoon."

To his relief, Seacrest inserted himself into the fray with a discreet cough and announced, "Mr Jackson here to see you, sir."

Uncle Simon heaved a deep one from his chest, as if grateful that the duties of an uncle only extended so far, and said, "Off you go," and David went.

**Author's Note:**

> as to how mr simon cowell has become a relative (and for that matter, ms paula abdul), i can only wave it off as the same literary magic that keeps wodehouse's characters firmly in that bright spot between two world wars.


End file.
